Jiang Wanning was unable to concentrate for the entire day.
She sat at her workstation, staring at the numbers on a report displayed on her computer screen, but her mind was filled with thoughts of the strange old woman from that morning and the jade bangle around her wrist.
The bangle rested on her left wrist, icy cold against her skin, like a thin ring of ice.
She had tried countless times to take it off. She used hand soap and applied hand cream, but the bangle did not budge in the slightest, as though it had grown onto her hand.
None of her colleagues noticed the new accessory on her wrist. Then again, who would pay attention to someone who never joined in the casual conversations in the break room?
Jiang Wanning clicked to the next page of the report and lowered her gaze to her left wrist.
The bangle was made of jade, but it was not the clear, vibrant green kind of high quality jade. Its color was a dull grayish white, as though covered by a layer of dust, and faint cloud patterns could be seen across its surface, so subtle that they were almost impossible to make out.
She had not had the chance to examine it closely when the strange old woman had put it on her, but now that she looked carefully, she discovered four tiny characters engraved on the inside of the bangle. They were so small that she had to block the light with her fingernail just to make them out.
“Ring of Ningyuan.”
A ring?
Why would a jade bangle have the character for “ring” engraved on it?
She took out her phone and searched for the meaning of “Ningyuan.” The phrase roughly referred to deep water gathering together, though it could also imply a stagnant abyss. It did not sound like a particularly auspicious name.
She searched again for information about inscriptions engraved inside jade bangles. There were all kinds of explanations online. Some claimed such bangles were tokens of love, others said they were family heirlooms, while some described them as magical artifacts.
The words “magical artifact” made her stare at the screen for a little longer before she finally closed the webpage.
At three in the afternoon, she got up to get some water.
The window in the break room faced the direction of the subway station. Standing before it, she suddenly remembered the way the strange old woman had disappeared.
She had not turned around and walked away, nor had she blended into the crowd. She had simply vanished in an instant.
It was as though someone had cut her out of a picture, leaving the background seamlessly stitched back together, while even the people passing by showed no sign that anything was unusual.
It made no sense.
Jiang Wanning had grown up in an orphanage and had seen all kinds of adults who came to “choose” children.
She knew those looks all too well. They examined, evaluated, and silently assigned a value to you.
But the strange old woman that morning had looked at her differently.
It did not feel as though she had been looking at Jiang Wanning herself. It was more like she had been looking at someone she had waited a very long time to find.
When work ended, Jiang Wanning did not stay late.
That was extremely rare in her career. She had worked at this company for five years, and her daily attendance record was practically identical every day. She arrived at nine and left at six, and even when she worked overtime, she never stayed later than seven.
Today, she shut down her computer at 5:58, packed her things, slung her bag over her shoulder, and left.
Xiao Zhou, an intern in her group, glanced at her as if she wanted to say something, but ultimately held back.
Jiang Wanning paid her no attention.
When she returned to her rented apartment, she changed into her slippers, tossed her bag onto the sofa, and went to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of cooled boiled water.
She had only taken a few sips when she stopped and looked down at her left wrist.
The bangle was still there.
Of course it was.
She sat on the sofa for a while, then stood up and walked to her desk. Opening the drawer, she rummaged around and pulled out a sewing kit.
Inside was a small packet of sewing needles. She took out the thinnest one, held it up to the light to examine the tip, then set it down.
She went to the bathroom, washed her hands with soap, dried them, and returned to sit at her desk.
She stared at the needle for about ten seconds.
Then she remembered something from her childhood.
Once, at the orphanage, she had fallen and scraped her knee. Blood had run down her calf, but she had neither cried nor made a sound.
An auntie had rushed over to treat the wound. As she dabbed iodine on it, she had said, “Why is this child like a block of wood? Doesn’t it hurt?”
It hurt.
She simply felt that crying out would not make the wound heal, so she had seen no reason to cry.
But now, she was about to prick her own finger with this needle, and that made her hesitate.
Not because she was afraid of the pain, but because what if nothing happened?
What if this was just an ordinary jade bangle that happened to be stuck on her wrist, and she was about to do something incredibly foolish to an ordinary piece of jewelry?
After thinking it over, she picked up the needle anyway.
When the tip pierced the pad of her left index finger, it hurt more than she had expected.
She frowned and squeezed out a drop of blood, letting it fall onto the inner side of the bangle, directly over the four characters engraved there: “Ring of Ningyuan.”
The blood landed on the jade, but instead of sliding away or clotting, it disappeared as though it had fallen onto a sheet of absorbent paper.
The color of the jade bangle changed visibly before her eyes.
It shifted from grayish white to pale cyan, then from pale cyan into a deep, heavy shade of dark green, like a stone that had rested at the bottom of the water for a thousand years and had suddenly been pulled to the surface.
Then the world disappeared.
Jiang Wanning felt something yank her violently.
It was not her body that moved, but her consciousness, as though it had been pulled away and someone had shoved her from behind.
Her vision went dark at first, then the light returned like a rising tide.
She was standing in a field of grass.
Tender green blades reached her ankles, soft beneath her feet and damp with the scent of soil.
Above her was a soft, boundless glow of milky white light. It resembled an overcast sky, yet it was not a sky at all, because there were no clouds and no horizon. There was only an even light flowing toward her from every direction.
The air was incredibly fresh.
Not the freshness of a city after rain, nor that of a mountain forest in the early morning, but the freshness of a place that had never been breathed in before.
It was as though this world possessed enormous lungs, while she was nothing more than a tiny intruder.
Jiang Wanning remained where she was and slowly turned in a circle.
To her left was a field.
It covered roughly four or five mu of land, filled with dark soil that was as level as though it had been measured with a ruler. The furrows were perfectly straight, and the earth looked freshly turned, as if it were waiting for someone to plant something.
To her right was a small stream.
The water was so clear that she could see the pebbles beneath the surface. The current was gentle, producing a faint murmur, as though someone were speaking softly.
On the other side of the stream stood a thatched cottage.
It was very small, perhaps only twenty or thirty square meters. Its walls were made of yellow mud, and its roof was thatched. There were no steps in front of the door, only bare earth beneath her feet.
A cluster of bamboo grew beside the cottage. It was not very tall, with thin stalks that remained completely motionless beneath the windless light.
Farther away, grayish white mist stretched across the distance like the boundary of a map, enclosing the entire space in an irregular circle.
Jiang Wanning stood there for a moment before crouching down to touch the grass.
It was real.
It was moist and resilient, and when she rubbed it between her fingertips, she could even smell the scent of grass juice.
Then she walked to the stream, crouched beside it, and reached into the water.
It was cool, though not icy. It was the kind of coolness unique to mountain spring water, carrying a faint hint of sweetness.
After hesitating for a moment, she scooped up a handful and brought it to her lips, taking a small sip.
It was sweet and refreshing.
As she swallowed, a faint current spread from her throat into her chest, as though someone had gently breathed inside her body.